St. John Fisher was martyred two weeks before St Thomas More, on 22nd June 1535, and each year that day is now set aside to commemorate these two saints. In the Sarum Rite used by the Catholic Church at that time, it was the feast of St. Alban, the proto-martyr of England. The two men went to their deaths for the same fault in the eyes of Henry VIII. But while More is widely celebrated, Fisher has been broadly forgotten, yet his martyrdom was equally worthy.

Fisher was born around 1459. The argument for this early date is that the portrait of him by Holbein puts his age at 74, and cannot have been painted while he was in the Tower of London, so an age at death of 76 seems probable. He was the son of Robert and Agnes, who seem to have been fairly prosperous, and was born in Beverley in Yorkshire. He certainly showed in his life the gritty determination associated with that county.

Fisher was primarily a scholar and cleric, but via Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, he came to national prominence. He greatly admired Margaret and was her spiritual adviser from 1497, when he was appointed her confessor, until her death shortly after Henry VIII’s succession to the throne.

It was through her influence that Henry VII promoted him in 1504 to be Bishop of Rochester, one of the poorest bishoprics, and he did so after seeking Margaret’s permission. Henry wrote to his mother, saying that he did not wish to offend her by appointing her confessor, but he did so because he had had heard of Fisher’s “great and singular virtue… especially his good and virtuous living and conversation”.

That Fisher lived virtuously was borne out after his imprisonment in the Tower, when the king’s men raided his living quarters. The only items of value they found were plate for liturgical use and books which they wantonly destroyed. In great excitement they found a locked box in his private oratory, which they took away to open in front of witnesses, expecting to find much treasure within. All they found were a hair shirt and three scourges which Fisher used to purify himself. When informed of this, Fisher said he would have removed them had he not left in such a hurry, for he did not want his piety to be a matter of pride.

As well as being Margaret’s spiritual adviser, Fisher was a senior figure at Cambridge in 1494, when he was the Senior Proctor, becoming Master of Michaelhouse in 1497, and Vice-Chancellor in 1491. At this time, Cambridge was going through one of its phases of listlessness, with little learning and no money. Fisher helped change both of these conditions.

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If you missed the earlier installments, you can find them here:

Part VIII: The Report Stage and Third Reading

Part VII: The C…

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Andy Burnham’s advocacy of devolution brings the problem of England back into the political limelight. It is not new, but there has never been a good answer to it, and regional mayors are simply another attempt to solve a potentially insoluble problem. It is that England is too big.

England contains 85% of the population of the United Kingdom. This has risen since the time of Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), when it was just under 75%. Nonetheless, he made a point in relation to Home Rule for Ireland that remains essential today. Balfour set out his concerns in a speech made in Aberdeen in 1913, when he called Home Rule an “experiment in federalism of the most impossible, unexampled, and preposterous character”. This was because federalism depended, as it still does, on some level of proportionality between the members. If one part overwhelmingly overshadows the others, it cannot work.

This is why we have Parliaments or assemblies for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but not for England. It would dwarf the other bodies in its size, the population it represents, and its wealth. The First Minister of England would be the true prime minister, as his power would, in reality, become greater than that of the nominal prime minister. Thus, to make federalism work, England would have to be divided up into regions that would be at least proportionate to the devolved authorities.

That, however, would be outrageous. How can a federal system be fair when three areas are allowed to retain their historic characters as unified nations, but England cannot? The biggest country would have to be chopped up to accommodate the smaller ones, which was and is simply unfair to the English and deeply undemocratic.

Yet this is the effect of what Burnham seeks to do. It is clear that a new government led by him would look to advance the steps taken by George Osborne, which created regional devolved authorities covering made-up areas. They have no geographic logic, no historic unity, and no democratic mandate.

With the exception of the Greater London Authority, whenever a vote has been allowed via a referendum on these structures, they have been defeated. They have been dreamt up by bureaucrats for the convenience of officialdom, not for the benefit of residents.

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Turmoil in Downing Street and a rapid turnover of Prime Ministers is not new. It has been part of the system since the 18th century and depends much on personalities as on events. In the 305 years since Sir Robert Walpole became First Lord of the Treasury and de facto Prime Minister, there have been 58 holders of the office, if Lord Bath and Lord Waldegrave are excluded, as they usually are (Bath was given the seals of office as First Lord of the Treasury, but returned them after 48 hours in 1746 as he could not form a government, while Waldegrave tried for five days in 1757 in similar circumstances and also failed).

Waldegrave’s mini prime ministership came in a period almost as volatile as our own. From 1756 to 1766, the Duke of Newcastle was replaced by the Duke of Devonshire in 1757, who was briefly succeeded by Waldegrave, who was then superseded by a returning Newcastle. He lasted five years, including over the transition from George II to George III, until the Earl of Bute took his place for just under a year before Grenville assumed office until 1765, when the Marquis of Rockingham kissed hands, only to be replaced by William Pitt the Elder.

Thus in ten years there were seven complete appointments of a Prime Minister and one aborted one. During this period the country did rather well, even though it was at war for much of it. The Seven Years’ War, which Pitt strongly supported, ran from 1756 to 1763, and included the great and famous year of victories, 1759, when successes such as Pondicherry secured India and the wonderful generalship of Wolfe’s victory at Quebec removed the French threat from Canada. War obviously has an economic cost and adds to taxation, which is never popular, so was part of the reason for the instability.

Personal factors also mattered. Pitt was the driving force of the time, a much bigger political figure than any of his rivals, possibly on the scale of Boris Johnson in terms of his charisma and popular appeal. He was loved by the people and known as the Great Commoner. It was down to him that England was victorious in the Seven Years’ War, and it was said in 1759 that “The church bells were worn threadbare with ringing for victories”.

Yet Pitt was not a collegiate man, and George III disliked him because he had, in his view, betrayed his father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, by serving George II. Hanoverian fathers rarely got on with their sons. Thus George I hated George II, who likewise loathed his heir Frederick Prince of Wales, the father of George III. In this context anyone who abandoned Frederick to support George II was deemed to be a traitor by George III.

Pitt was also mad, not just as a term of political abuse, but in the sense that in a modern age he would probably have been certified. On some occasions he could not bear to see anyone at all, so his food was simply taken to his room by a footman and he would eat it alone. As the footman brought the food in, Pitt would be looking out of the window, as he could not bear even to see anyone else. Perhaps understandably, George III did not want this man to be his Prime Minister, so avoided it by giving his tutor Bute the role once he had eased out Newcastle.

It was also a period of political transition. Boswell recorded Johnson saying, “Walpole was a minister given by the King to his people: Pitt was a minister given by the people to the King”. This epigram illustrates the constitutional development that was taking place at the time, although one it is easier to spot in retrospect.

Although the country was a long way from reform, the position of prime minister was moving from being one purely of royal patronage, but a place that needed popular support as well. The age of Walpole and Pelham had gone, the King’s ministers who knew how to control the Commons, and now the Commons was more sensitive to popular demands, and a king might well have to appoint a prime minister who was not his first choice.

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Since Andy Burnham has won the Makerfield by-election, there must be a new election for the Mayor of Greater Manchester. In most cases, mayors may remain Members of Parliament, but this is not allowed if the mayoralty includes the role of Police and Crime Commissioner.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Labour has rushed through a change to the mayoral voting system, in the hope of making it easier to win this second election. Losing it would be a catastrophic blow for a new Prime Minister, assuming the existing one is out of office by then, especially if he were the man who had caused the vacancy.

In 2011, 13 million people voted ‘No’ to the Alternative Vote replacing First Past the Post (FPTP) for British elections, while a mere 6.1 million voted for the change. Support for the status quo was a little over two-thirds of the electorate, while only 32.1% wanted a new system. Turnout was relatively low at 42%, but respectable, especially when it was such a clear margin.

This referendum applied only to parliamentary elections, but its clear result ought surely to have some relevance to other elections. Certainly, it provided some justification for the last Conservative government instituting FPTP for mayors and police commissioner elections, where a proportional system had previously been used. Yet Labour has used its parliamentary majority to return to the Supplementary Vote system.

The Supplementary Vote system is not quite the same as the Alternative Vote, but it is similar. In the Alternative Vote, electors rank each party or candidate in turn and may use as many preferences as there are candidates, although the last preference would always be otiose. The votes are then reallocated as each candidate in turn is eliminated, starting with the person with the lowest number of votes, until only two candidates are left, at which point the one with the most votes is the winner.

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It is sad to see the Bank of England, once the cornerstone of British prosperity, now a debased institution that is incompetent, idle and dishonest. These are heavy charges to fire at a once great organisation, but each is true.

The job of the Bank is set out in law; it must keep inflation within a range around a 2% target. It has failed. It also has a long-standing responsibility to maintain confidence in the currency which it does not seem to realise is part of its job.

The inflation failure was caused because the Monetary Policy Committee took no notice of monetary policy. To help the government pay for Covid it printed billions of pounds and was then slow to react even when its own chief economist, Andrew Haldane, warned that inflation was about to takeoff. It dismissed these fears and pretended that price increases were temporary, so inflation soared to 11.1% at its peak in 2022. In comparison, Japan saw a peak closer to 4%.

This failure of policy making by the notably independent Bank of England continues to have consequences for British families. The cost of living crisis was caused by its inability to do its job. Unlike the Federal Reserve in the United States, its obligation to control prices is not tempered by another objective such as economic growth. It is a simple, single rule and the Bank bungled.

This failure came about because it believed its own propaganda, while the MPC was more concerned to meet its quotas for diversity of background than to have any diversity of opinion.

Its solution to the 2008 financial crisis and to covid was “monetary easing“, a polite term for printing money. It was a sensible answer to the credit crunch but not to the supply disruptions that were caused by Covid. The billions of pounds that were printed meant that too much money was chasing too few goods which was inevitably inflationary. Unfortunately, the bank did not even understand what it was doing wrong.

It also became deeply political during this time, not least by enforcing the green dogma on lenders. The Prudential Regulatory Authority still boasts on its webpages that it “was the first central bank and supervisor authority to set supervisory expectations for PRA-regulated Banks and insurers (firms) management of climate related financial risks“. This discouraged investment in oil and gas exploration especially in the North Sea. It also has nothing to do with the Bank’s role, it was egregious political interference in a highly controversial area which, since Russia invaded Ukraine, has proved both foolish and damaging to the UK economy.

After failing on inflation and politicising risk management, the Bank now seems set on undermining the currency because it does not understand the illusion of paper money. Money is supposed to be a unit of account, a means of exchange and a store of value. A unit of account is easy to achieve. The other two are more complicated as “fiat” currency, that is to say money that is not backed by a real asset, such as gold or silver, is entirely a matter of confidence. The value of a bank note is zero, yet it is accepted as a means of exchange because the seller knows that he will be able to use it to pay for other goods and services. Notes are still a means of exchange even when they fail to be a store of value. This is shown as pound notes continue to be accepted even though over the last 112 years they have become worthless.

In 1914 if a customer went into his bank with a £1 note he could have demanded and would have received a gold sovereign in return. These coins are still minted and have just under a quarter of a Troy ounce of gold in them, they have the monarch’s head on the obverse and St George slaying the Dragon on the reverse. Powerful symbolism to indicate the strength and value of the currency and indeed the country. Historically coinage was used as a way of showing the authority of the ruler and the solidity of the money.

The sovereign you could have received for £1 in 1914 is now worth nearly £800 in its gold value where is the pound note is still worth a pound. Inflation has destroyed the value of paper money whereas the gold coin kept its value for centuries; it was worth a little more in 1914 then it was in 1661 just after the restoration of Charles II.

The devaluation of paper currency proves its illusory quality. It has not been, and will not be, a store of value; even with inflation at the target of 2% prices double every 35 years. Heroic figures help to maintain the illusion while rabbits do not. When paper currency was backed by gold it did not need these designs; the words “I promise to pay the bearer on demand“ were sufficient. However, as inflation debased the currency so it became necessary to boost confidence by putting the Queen‘s head on one side and then important figures on the other. This made notes look more serious. Now the opposite is happening and the anodyne approach, taken by countries that have little history or are too politically divided to accept individual heroes, is proposed which further undermines their store of value.

It fails to learn from the history of coinage which always used to be an expression of power and of the United States, which does not endlessly fiddle with its notes. This continuity has helped the dollar to preserve and even enhance its global preeminence.

The idleness of the Bank is shown by its employment practices. On its website it claims to employ over 5000 people, although in other places it says 4000 people so may not even know who it employs, some of whom it allows to work not only from home but from abroad for 40 days, the equivalent of two months, a year. This is effectively paid truancy. The Bank restricts the equipment that it staff may take abroad because of the security risk, so must realise that its employees, sipping piña coladas in Havana, will be unable to work because they cannot take their laptops with them. As the institution that is responsible for the cost of living crisis, this is a contemptuous way to treat the taxpayer who funds their salaries.

Sadly, it is also dishonest as it did not tell the truth over its decision to change its notes. The Governor, Andrew Bailey, said it had to be done for security reasons when he stated that “the Bank’s foremost objective is the security of our bank notes, which includes tackling the threat from counterfeiting”. Unfortunately, this is humbug, it was a political decision. A freedom of information request has now revealed that Bank commissioned research said that the great figures from our history were “contentious and not representative of the UK’s cultural and natural diversity” and such figures represented “a backward looking vision of the United Kingdom that carries too great a risk of division and controversy”.

This incompetence, idleness and dishonesty is a consequence of the politicisation of the bank which started under Mark Carney. He hated Brexit and made the Bank an active participant in the referendum campaign. He also imbued it with his personal green agenda. Bailey has done nothing to stop this, so we yearn for the return of Lord King who was the last proper Governor, a man who respected the proprieties of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.

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This poem ought to be known to …

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If you missed the earlier installments, you can find them here:

Part VI: The Second Reading

Part V: The First Reading

Part IV: From conception…

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Bede is undoubtedly better known than many of those that I have considered in my series on the greatest figures in English history but, nevertheless, much of his significance is largely forgotten. We owe him the very concept of Englishness, and whenever you date a contract by the conventional dating system for years, 2026 for instance, you are commemorating Bede.

Bede lived in the northeast of England in the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, where he wrote commentaries upon the Bible, composed sermons, considered dates, and developed a system for counting on fingers by which schoolboys could pass coded messages to each other. Perhaps most famously, he wrote what is called the first English history.

Bede’s life, by way of biography, is little known. His works were prodigious and influential, but he rarely mentioned much of his personal life, although there are a few hints. One such is that he was orphaned at an early age and had a strong monastic vocation. This comes from the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith.

Ceolfrith was the abbot of Jarrow, which was hit so badly by the plague that only two members of the monastic choir survived. One was the abbot himself, and the other seems to have been Bede. As the Life recounts, “In the monastery over which Ceolfrith presided, all who could read or preach or recite the Antiphons were swept away, except the Abbot himself and one little lad nourished and taught by him, who is now a priest of the same monastery, and both by word of mouth and by writing commends to all who wish to know them the Abbot’s worthy deeds. And the Abbot, sad at heart because of this visitation, ordained that contrary to their former rite, they should, except at Vespers and Matins, recite their Psalms without Antiphons, and when this had been done with many tears and lamentations on his part for the space of a week, he could not bear it any longer, but decreed that the Psalms and the Antiphons should be restored to their order, according to the regular course; and by means of himself and the aforesaid boy, he carried out with no little labour that which he had decreed, until he could either train them himself or procure from elsewhere men able to take part in the divine service”. The little lad, nourished and taught by him, was almost certainly Bede, and Ceolfrith was almost an adopted father, in effect, as well as being Bede’s spiritual father.

When Ceolfrith departed for Rome in 716, as he knew his life was drawing to a close, Bede was struck by a sudden anguish of mind. Benedicta Ward, in her biography of Bede, argues that his shock and unawareness of Ceolfrith’s departure show the extent to which Bede was concentrating on his studies and his daily religious duties; she indicates a rather unworldly young man.

This is supported by his comments about religious people, even bishops, who enjoyed “laughing, joking, storytelling, feasting and drinking, instead of feeding their souls with heavenly sacrifices”. This makes Bede sound rather humourless, but he had a high purpose. He wanted to save souls and devoted all his work to that end.

There is a story of how in his old age, when his sight was failing him, “Some mockers said to him… ‘Bede, behold, the people are gathered together waiting to hear the word of God, arise and preach to them’. And he, thirsting for the salvation of souls, went up and preached, thinking that there were people there, whereas there was no one but the mockers”.

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However, artificial intelligence, the new AI, is of more fundamental importance and will affect all our lives individually as well as society at large. As an experiment, I have asked ChatGPT to write this article in my style and will add it at the end of this piece.

Pope Leo XIV issued a Papal Encyclical on the 15th May entitled Magnifica Humanitas. This is more than just a discussion of AI. It is a wide-ranging text deliberately placing itself in the pantheon of Catholic social teaching. It celebrates the 135th anniversary of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, in which Pope Leo XIII “gave impetus to the reflexion on society, the economy and politics, which is now known as the ‘social doctrine of the Church’”. The current Pope uses a careful discussion of the evolution of the Church’s social doctrine to justify his role in commentating on “the technocratic paradigm and digital power”.

The Pope’s concerns are of “humanity becoming a victim of its own achievements”, risking a new Tower of Babel. He worries that control is with corporations, not states, and that “criteria for judgment and discernment in the new situation… the inalienable, inalienable dignity of the human person, the common good, the universal doctrine of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity and social justice, may be at risk”.

The Holy Father cautiously notes that any statement on AI risks being quickly outdated, and that even those who design them possess only a limited understanding of their actual functioning. His main point is the fairly uncontroversial one that AI can be a valuable tool, but it calls for a measured and vigilant approach.

His conclusion is that AI needs a human touch as it will affect human lives, and this must be done with a moral compass. A machine, however clever it appears to be, cannot have such a conscience. This is especially true, he argues, in relation to AI used for military purposes, when potential targets must be considered in the light of morality. The ability to go to war without risking the lives of your soldiers should not be a reason to do so.

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If you missed the earlier installments, you can find them here:

Part V: The First Reading

Part IV: From conception to F…

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On my bookshelves I have a copy of a book called The Delusion of Incomes Policy. It was written by Peter Lilley, now Lord Lilley, and Samuel Brittan, who was a long-standing and distinguished Financial Times journalist. It was published in 1977 and has an ironic dedication to Edward Heath and Dennis Healy – “without whom this book would not have been possible”.

Both men were deluded by incomes policy, and this book was a powerful response to their folly. Its arguments are so well known that I did not expect to need to consult it, believing it could sit happily undisturbed as a reminder of human folly that would never recur. Surely everyone knows that incomes policies and the price controls that go with them always fail, regardless of the penalties to people who disobey. Unfortunately, this was a naive view, as a fear of inflation has led politicians back to the old follies, as if they were mediaeval peasants asking for the church bells to be rung to ward off a thunderstorm.

The history of attempts at price control is fascinating. The Roman Emperor Diocletian is believed to be the first to have attempted a systematic control when he issued the Edictum de Pretiis in AD 301. Interestingly, this followed what could be called a failed monetarist experiment, by which he had tried to deal with inflation through rebasing the currency, but had got the conversion rates wrong and so had failed.

The Edict set out reasons for controlling prices which have been heard to echo down the centuries. They included the greed of merchants and the avarice of speculators. It set prices for 900 goods, 130 grades of labour and 41 freight rates. The penalty for infringing the rules was death. Yet it did not work and ancient authorities recorded the failure of goods to come to market, and massive price rises combined with corruption in the ensuing decades.

Regrettably, Diocletian’s failures were forgotten and powerful rulers repeated his mistake. Charlemagne, who became the first Holy Roman Emperor in 800, tried to stop price rises by edict in 806. In England, another powerful ruler, Edward III, responded to the Black Death by the 1351 Statute of Labourers, which tried to fix maximum wages.

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The local election results were a triumph for Nigel Farage as well as being a modest success for Rupert Lowe. The Tories improved from 2025 levels but are still below those of 2024, so any optimism needs to be tempered. Beyond these headlines it is worth looking at the details of the national vote, and what that would have meant in terms of seats had it been a general election.

I have taken my figures from Thrasher and Rawlins, who have an excellent track record on converting local results into national ones, and published them in The Sunday Times this weekend. They calculate that if these results were replicated in a general election, then Reform would come top with 27% of the popular vote, with the Tories second on 20%. Labour is estimated to secure 15%, with both the Lib Dems and the Greens on 14%.

From these figures, no one party would have enough seats in the House of Commons to form a majority on its own. More importantly, even if by some fluke 27% were translated into a majority, it could never be a mandate. Sir Keir Starmer has clearly suffered from winning a mere 33% of the vote, in spite of his huge 170-seat majority. Although legally Parliament is sovereign, if a party has no mandate, it lacks the moral authority to pursue major change. Political reality is greater than the rules, because Parliament is made up of individuals and, especially in the Commons, MPs are conscious of the voters’ will.

This means that Starmer’s majority has been able to do very little as MPs are reluctant to support policies that are not popular in their constituencies. This is especially true for MPs with small majorities who feel that they cannot alienate any pressure group, however small. It is much easier to be brave with a majority of 20,000 than of 200. Thus, the vote share matters hugely for a party looking to be radical, which Reform has to be to fulfil its purpose. 27% or even 33% is simply not enough to achieve its ambitions.

However, in coalition with the Conservatives, this begins to change. Sky News forecasts that the local election results would have returned 284 Reform members and 96 Tories, so 380 altogether, or a majority of 110. This would be enough to put Nigel Farage into 10 Downing Street, and would create a stable, philosophically aligned government.

Consider the alternative. The only other majority would be if the Tories joined a rainbow coalition of Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and the Nationalists. This would be idiotic. A grand coalition to keep out Reform would simply not be supported by the majority of Conservatives, and would make the country feel cheated.

Hence, if it looks likely that the next election will produce a result that will lead to a Reform-Conservative coalition after the voting has taken place, why not prepare for it in advance? It is more honest, and offers the electorate a chance to vote for a unified platform agreed before the election, rather than a compromise cooked up afterwards.

It would give the new government a mandate for real change, which is sorely needed. As David Starkey has argued, there has to be a restoration. The constitutional clock needs to be put back to 1972 with government by the King in Parliament once again. The Supreme Court needs to be moved back into the House of Lords, and the Human Rights Act and membership of the European Convention of Human Rights must end. The Climate Change Act must be repealed, as must the 2010 Equalities Act and the Constitutional Reform and Government Act.

This needs a government with a large majority and a mandate for action, which the combination of the Tories and Reform would have. This would be enhanced by a pre-election deal, because the majority would be bigger and the electorate would know what to expect.

The logic of this seems compelling. It pre-empts the probable result where neither party is in a position to get to 40% on its own. Reform, for all its success, has not advanced from last year, and the Tories, even though Kemi Badenoch is the most popular leader of a party, is still polling at a lower level than in 2024.

This raises the question of what type of deal could be done, and there are historic examples. In the late 1880s, Conservatives did not oppose, in most cases, the Liberal Unionists, who then supported a Conservative administration. This was fairly informal and did not work in every constituency.

A better example is the 1918 coupon election, where Lloyd George and Bonar Law, for their respective parties, gave a letter of support or “coupon” to either a Lloyd George Liberal or a coalition Conservative candidate. Again, this did not work in all seats, but it held pretty widely and ensured that Lloyd George remained Prime Minister until 1922 on the back of Tory votes after the election.

In any coalition, it is worth learning one thing from David Cameron, which is that to make it work, the bigger party has to be generous. In this case, on current polls, Reform would be the bigger party. It would need to be generous by offering a coupon to all sitting Tory MPs. It would be invidious for a Tory leader to refuse a coupon to an incumbent, and although one or two existing and not very conservative Tory MPs might refuse, most would accept and it would create a basis for trust.

However, after this initial act of generosity, Reform would expect to win the bulk of seats in getting to the target of 325 and a majority. This would need to be done by analysing each seat to see who had the best chance. It is obvious that Reform can win in parts of the country where the Conservatives cannot. The Red Wall, where it has done so well in the recent local elections, is a clear example. It is also doing well in East Anglia and the Midlands. Any deal would have to recognise this, but equally, Reform’s chances in more Remain supporting areas are less good. So in Surrey and Oxfordshire, it would need to be a Conservative candidate.

Essentially, the two leaders would need to decide between them which seats each side would take. This would be helpful to Reform, which would then not need to find so many candidates, with the risk of selecting ones with reputational difficulties, which has been its besetting problem, as it is for all new parties.

To make this pact work, Tories must give up the silly nonsense of saying that Reform is not a right-wing party. For former members of a government which supported an earlier but equally left-wing version of the Renters’ Rights Act, this demands an ideological purity that they themselves never managed.

It is fanciful to think that only 20% of voters are basically Conservative, the 27% who support Reform are not left-wing, and those who assume they or their party hold such views are simply deluding themselves.

There are still a few tickets left for the last two shows of my Mogg, Unbuttoned tour.

Tour dates:

Tue 19 May – Lincoln

Sun 24 May – Winchester

I would be delighted if you would join me — you can find out more and book your tickets at jacobreesmogglive.com.

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If you missed the earlier installments, you can find them here:

Part IV: From conception to First Reading - how a Bill is created

Part III: The Glorious Revolution - Parliament takes con…

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Currently, a variety of electoral systems operate in the United Kingdom. The best known, First-past-the-post (FPTP), is used for parliamentary elections to Westminster and for local elections in England. However, the Scottish and Welsh parliaments use different mechanisms, which I thought were worth exploring.

Scotland uses an Additional Member system, resulting in a mixture of constituency MSPs and ‘additional members’. The constituency MSPs initially covered the same area as a Westminster MP, but this changed in 2005 when the number of seats in the United Kingdom Parliament from Scotland was cut from 73 to 59 as a result of boundary reforms. Scotland wanted to keep 73 MSPs, so the constituencies ceased to overlap. These seats return MSPs on the basis of a FPTP system.

However, on top of the 73 constituency MSPs, there are 56 additional members who are elected on a regional basis. Thus, each elector has two votes, one for a constituency and the other for a region. For this purpose, Scotland, is divided into eight regions, each of which returns seven additional members.

In the constituency seats, voters select an individual who represents a party (Independents can stand, but have not normally been successful). In the regional vote, people vote exclusively for a party which will have an advertised list of candidates for all the places available. Constituency candidates may also be on the regional list, so parties can ensure that their favoured people have a high chance of being elected. The additional members are determined by the D’Hondt system of proportional representation.

Victor D’Hondt, who devised this eponymous system, was a Belgian lawyer, so perhaps, other than Hercule Poirot and Tintin, the most famous Belgian. He developed it to deal with political instability and perceived unfairness in the Belgian electoral process. FPTP was favouring the Catholic and Conservative Party against the liberals and emerging socialists, while also distorting the balance between Belgian’s different linguistic communities. His proposals were not implemented immediately - he devised them in 1878, but they were only accepted in the two years before his death in 1901.

D’Hondt, while a proportional system, still favours larger parties to some degree, but it usually makes it hard for a single party to win an outright majority. In the case of Scotland, the SNP is usually in coalition with the Greens, although historically it has also shared power with the Lib Dems and even won outright at its high point of popularity.

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